One of Florida’s most iconic and visible art deco homes is on the market for $24.9 million following a renovation that updated the 88-year-old house without crushing its 1930s-era glamour.
Designed by lauded society architect Belford Shoumate, the West Palm Beach home at 2631 S. Flagler Drive is owned by a former Palm Beach couple, financier Lee Munder and his jewelry-designer wife Laura. The house is notable for its porthole windows, floral carved reliefs and terrazzo floors tinted an eye-catching sea-foam green.
The style of the home is called nautical moderne art deco. It is an exceptional enough example of that era of design that it was visited in 2023 by attendees of the World Congress on Art Deco, which was hosted in Miami that year.
And while Miami has many examples of art deco hotels, large single-family homes on the water are more rare, said Sharon Koskoff, president of the Art Deco Society of the Palm Beaches.
“It’s quite famous,” Koskoff said about the West Palm Beach home. “Its location facing Palm Beach and the Intracoastal and the superb style of building make it a grand art deco mansion.”
The 0.55-acre lot includes the 5,100-square-foot two-story historic home, which has three bedrooms, four bathrooms, an elevator, a soaring curved staircase and a pool. There is also a separate three-bedroom guest house built in 2001 that has 2,000 square feet of living space and a three-car garage.
The Munders bought 2631 S. Flagler Drive at the end of 2012 for $3.5 million, according to Palm Beach County Property Appraiser records. That sale closed several months before the couple set a county price record for a condominium sale — since eclipsed — when they sold their lakeside double penthouse for a recorded $17.45 million in Il Lugano, the lakeside development on Seminole Avenue on the near North End of Palm Beach. The buyer in that off-market condo deal was an entity associated with Lizzie Tisch and her billionaire husband, Jonathan Tisch, co-chairman of Loews Corp. and co-owner of the New York Giants.
Lee Munder founded Lee Munder Capital Group, a Boston-based investment advisory firm that is today known as LMCG investments. His wife founded Laura Munder Fine Jewelry.
Lee Munder said he would drive by the home on Flagler Drive and admire it on a regular basis. Then he saw the previous owner putting a “for sale” sign out.
“When I first walked in it, I knew we were going to buy it,” Munder said. “While there is a good amount of art deco around, this house struck me as being truly authentic. It just has a presence.”
Shoumate, who died in 1991, began designing homes in Palm Beach and West Palm Beach in the late 1930s and has contributed, or been the main architect, on more than 500 buildings in South Florida, according to Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach.
One of his first commissions was the “Boat House” on North Lake Way in Palm Beach, which is designed in the art moderne style.
The home at 2631 S. Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach was designed for Ralph Wagner, the then-president of the Palm Beach Art League.
“Art deco is about speed, ships, transportation, automobiles,” Koskoff said. “In Florida, some of our oldest buildings are art deco so they are very important to Florida history.”
The Munders, who have also owned properties in the Town of Palm Beach, set about updating the home, which they lived in as their personal residence.
But the Munders didn’t want the house to be a “museum” for art deco. They wanted to modernize it by mixing in some newer elements and making it comfortable for a family.
They collapsed five bedrooms into three, remodeled three bathrooms, added solar shades, installed a chandelier that hangs from the second floor to the first and was originally designed for a hotel in Vienna.
In the dining room, they added a fixture above the table that has 1,200 lights in it.
“When you’re having dinner there, it doesn’t look modern. It looks like stars in the sky,” Munder said.
Little was done to the outside of the house, where you can look through the windows from the back and see the water in front.
The Munders originally put the home on the market in late 2024 with a list price of $29.5 million. At the time, there were few comparable homes listed at that price on Flagler Drive, said Jim McCann, broker associate with Premier Estate Properties, who is representing the Munders.
They reduced the price, then took it off the market until it was relisted on the Multiple Listing Service in October for $24.95 million.
In June, a single-family home a few blocks south of 2631 S. Flagler sold for $28.2 million. That broke the previous West Palm Beach record for highest single-family home sale of $21 million in 2023.
There are also a handful of homes along West Palm’s waterfront with listing prices of $20 million-plus including a nearly finished new construction home with seven bedrooms and a second-floor pool that’s listed for $42.5 million.
“Now we have more company in the price range,” McCann said. “If you think about what that land would be worth and the value of the home, it’s pretty easy to justify the price.”
McCann said the post-pandemic influx of new residents and businesses to West Palm Beach, the elevated restaurant and shopping offerings and lack of stigma for living on the mainland are plusses for the home.
“Years ago, Palm Beachers wouldn’t think about coming this way,” McCann said. “Now I think the buyer could be an existing Palm Beacher or someone new to the market who is looking for a home of stature.”
Darrell Hofheinz of the Palm Beach Daily News contributed to this story.
Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate, weather, and the environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism: Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Munders’ iconic West Palm Beach art deco home lists for $24.9 million
Reporting by Kimberly Miller, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
